I was out in my yard this week taking pictures of flowers and such. These are two of the pictures that I took; I’d love to hear comments that anyone may have on either of the pictures: composition, camera settings, etc.

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With the day lily I would a use smaller f-stop -maybe f/8 or f/11. When you’re zoomed in that far there is very little depth of field, consequently the whole flower is not in focus. Even at f/11 the background should still be plenty blurred. Also remember that the focus falls 1/3 in front and 2/3 behind were your focus point is. So focus on the front of the flower.
The forsythia leaves are in focus even at f/5 because they’re not as 3D.

Love the intentional placement of leaves in the first one, and blurry background of course. Appears slightly back-focused. I wonder what it would look like in B&W….the light, middle leaf is up against a dark splotch of background, and I think there’s some really neat contrast there.

The second one is awesome. Sharp. Colorful. Great contrast. Great placement. Good job.

@blessingscaptured, thanks! I will try to get outside and try it with a more narrow aperture to see if I can get the whole flower in focus as you mentioned.

@jamesstaddon, could you explain what you mean by “back-focused”?
Here’s the first pic in B&W. I find it interesting to see it in that perspective; my brother-in-law’s mom has an eye disorder and one of the effects of that disorder is that she is color-blind, so this is how she’s sees everything all the time! She has never seen color in her entire life!

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@LydiaBennentt that looks great! I like how the whole flowers is focused now. I’m always having to remind myself to narrow down my aperture when I’m taking close ups.
One other thing. I know that it’s hard to get the light right, And use a narrow aperture; but I noticed that the center of the flower is shaded and dark. Maybe you could turn the flower around, use a flower that was pointed at the sun, or take it at a different time of day.

Using the exact spot that’s supposed to be in focus as your point of reference, “back-focused” is when behind that spot is actually what is in focus, and “front-focused” is when in front of that spot is actually what is in focus.

In your photo, since the leaf that is your subject is not completely in focus (whereas all the other leaves are in focus), it feels like the photo isn’t focused properly. The focus is on the stem of the subject leaf instead of on the broad area of the subject leaf, leading me to comment that it was back focused.

Ok well besides the fact that I have a Nikon and am not finding “enable/disable focus point display during image playback” on my camera, I do tend to focus-recompose a decent amount of the time, so it may not be helpful anyways.

…I should probably just work on being more aware of where I’m focusing 🙂

My Pentax DSLR has an option to zoom with one click to 8x magnification as soon as the picture is taken. I often use that feature to check for critical focus where I want it: (on the eyes, during a portrait shoot for example).